Month: November 2014

In a recent poll by Alignable, the social network for small business owners, 64% of over 1,000 owners selected “word-of-mouth referrals” as the most effective way to acquire new customers. This was the most effective customer acquisition method by a mile—word-of-mouth was 3.5x higher than the next result, social media.

But now what? Since you can’t simply go out and buy word-of-mouth, what’s a business owner to do to actually take greater advantage of it to drive their business success?

Know Your Influencers

Who has credibility with local customers that you can rely on to tell others about your business?

Your customers!
There’s no doubt that your customers are your best source since they have directly experienced what you have to offer. If you provide a great customer experience they are likely to talk about it when asked by a friend or colleague. Be sure to stay top of mind via regular email communications highlighting upcoming events, promotions, and featured products or services.

Local businesses nearby!
Other local business owners are a great potential source of word-of-mouth that’s often left untapped. Already a trusted source for local business information, simply forming good relationships with a few other business owners can result in a significant increase in your word-of-mouth traffic.

Get Word-of-Mouth with Your Free Alignable Membership
Insightly and Alignable have partnered together to invite Insightly customers to Alignable’s small business social network. Not a member yet? Join your local business neighbors and take these easy steps to help your word-of-mouth grow!

1. Invite your customers and members to Alignable

   Inviting your existing customers and members to Alignable benefits you in two important ways. You get exposure in Alignable’s Neighborhood feed every time someone you invited joins because your name and a link to your profile appears as the “inviter.” And by getting people who know and would recommend you to join Alignable’s social network, you’re making it easy for them to spread the word about your business!

   

2. Share interesting and helpful content in your Alignable Neighborhood

   The best way to get businesses talking about you and with you is to post interesting and helpful content in the Neighborhood feed. Here’s an example of an SEO expert helping other members’ understand how keeping your business profiles (including Alignable’s) up-to-date helps you get better search results:

   

   We’ve seen a merchant organization get dozens of inquiries from potential new members after sharing relevant tips for growing a business. An insurance agent had many members thank him and ask for meetings after posting about things to consider when purchasing employee insurance. So share your knowledge!

3. Make others in the community feel welcome
   A simple way to get to know new potential members and customers is to reach out to them when they join Alignable. Welcome them in the Neighborhood feed and make them feel like a part of the community!

With Alignable, local businesses finally have an easy, online way to connect and discuss issues relevant to them. Make sure you’re taking advantage of every opportunity to be a helpful resource to your local business community, and it will pay off in spades!

We all know great customer service requires attention all year long. Your calendar provides helpful opportunities to connect and focus your customer service efforts during key times during the year.

Your customer service strategy should vary with the season. Depending on your industry, the holidays, back to school, even summer may be your busy time, during your off-peak times it can be helpful to “remind” your customers that you are thinking of them (and they should be thinking of you).

1:  Your calendar

It may seem like a no brainer, but it’s smart marketing. Whatever calendar you use, be it Google, Outlook, or a paper calendar, it is critical that you keep it updated. Being aware of the dates that are important to your customers can give you a real connection. With the Insightly calendar, you’ll be able to view deadlines and due dates and set up reminders (customer birthdays, special dates).

Another advantage to having a strong calendar and customer database is that you can think of new ways to connect with customers. For example, if a number of your customers have children, theme marketing around back-to-school might be popular, or if a number of your snowbird customer-base winters in Florida, you can strategize accordingly.

2:  Fast Website

If you don’t have a fast site, now is the time to upgrade and make sure you can keep your customers engaged and connected during busy holidays. A customer will not wait for a slow-to-load site or a page.  Make sure your website is friendly and easy to navigate.

3:  Smart Sales

If you are a large business, you can afford to compete with other companies on Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Smaller businesses may not have the location or strategy. Decide what works for you, and offer customers more personalized deals (web-based, or offers that coincide with activities your local area). If you live in a football-crazy state, then offer hot deals on game day or in honor of your team. Papa John’s, for example, offers half-off on pizza the day after a Bengal’s win at participating locations. Find a niche that others don’t have to keep your customers loyal and returning.  Or sign up for a business networking site like Alignable – find businesses close to you and create a joint promotion with them.

4:  Help your office get into the festivities

The holidays are a great time to build inter-office connections and improve the relationships between your staff. Loyal staff who stand behind your vision and product can be your biggest marketing allies. Make sure that everyone who works for you loves your company, and knows you are thinking of them during the holiday seasons.

Think outside the usual—December parties and gatherings can fill up the calendar quickly. Host a “We’re Thankful for You” employee get-together in November, or give employees a little Halloween acknowledgement with some candy or a day of silliness. Start your marketing strategy from within and build up a loyal team before you go into the holiday rush.

5: Manage your busiest time efficiently

Fall and winter can be the busiest season for many of us. Retailers are facing a rush in sales. Small business consultants, web-based businesses and others are facing deadlines, pre-holiday setup, and project wrap-up. Everything seems to be due by the end of the year…at the same time no one really wants to be in the office!

Get it all done by using a CRM to manage your workflow, quickly view the stages of every project, assign tasks and make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. Calculate critical due dates, track milestones, stay on top of your customer base, and use your dashboard to get quick insight into how everything is coming along.

6: Use tags to manage critical demographic information

Target your marketing strategies to the various demographics of your customer base using tags. You can sort customers based on age, location, and any other key bits of information. Perhaps you want to send a card to all customers, but a more personalized item or small gift to your key patrons. Loyal customers and clients can be tagged to help you tailor your strategy to each.

7: Feel good by giving back

The holiday season is a charitable time of year, and even if you can afford just a small donation from the proceeds of each sale, it will help customers choose you (and feel good about it). If you can’t afford to donate from your bottom line, try to think of new ways–offer to donate an “in-kind” item to a nonprofit’s silent auction, or get a few employees to volunteer at a local school event. Offering military, teacher or other discounts can also help your organization build its goodwill reputation.

8: Go beyond the card

Let’s face it—many holiday cards go straight in the trash, some without being opened. In these days of mass emails, many e-cards face the same fate. Some customers display cards briefly and a beautiful card can be appreciated, but to get the most out of your message, get creative. A mailed card is a great strategy, but a postcard is less expensive, can be easily printed in bulk, and gets your message read (even if it’s on the way to the bin).

Printing in a “handwriting” font, an alternate color, or if you have time, with a small personalized message can really set your message apart from all the others. All messages should include clear contact information, a link to your website, and something novel—a cute story, an anecdote, a great product, or a customer testimonial. Get yourself noticed!

9: With very little reward…

…You can reap great benefits! You’ll be surprised at what a little something sweet, a hot cup of coffee, or a nibble of holiday cheer will do to get customers to stop. Don’t believe it? Visit the grocery store on sample day and you’ll see how many customers turn out for a quick nosh.

Print your company’s message on candy wrappers, personalized napkins, or coffee cups. When customers have a sweet snack in their hand they will pay extra attention to your message.

10: Tell your story

Keep your website updated with testimonials and quotes. Ask customer to discuss what makes you different or how you touched their lives. Reach out and connect online or to the community around you. During the holidays customers love shareable photos, funny little pictures, and warm personal touches.   Use these on social media and your website to connect with customers. Keep your website updated and keep your information current. With some smart strategies in place, you can enjoy that holiday vacation time and ring in the new year with confidence!

Let us know if you have ideas of how to be creative during the holiday season.

A few weeks ago we received this enthusiastic post from one of our customers in Germany.  We thought that we would translate the post and share it.  The original post is in German is here.

 

At an event during Social Media Week in Hamburg last February, a freelancer told us excitedly about the CRM Insightly, which is specifically aimed at start-ups and SMBs. We were looking for a suitable CRM for plus3trainings, and since Insightly can be linked seamlessly with Google Apps, we decided to test the software.

Now, we are enthusiastic users and continue to discover more and more functions for us (more on that later) and also observe that the San Francisco-based team continually develops the software. For example, the Android app was recently completely revised, and since the end of September the app has been in the public beta phase. This beta phase is an example of what we like so much about Insightly. In the associated Google Plus group, beta users can indicate not only directly related errors but also leave suggested new features. And they get a reaction, typically someone answers from the team and explains if and when the feature will be available.

There are many reasons Insightly has been valuable to us, but the top three reasons are explained below.

1. We have a place to store important email communication. Insightly makes it fast and easy to store mail communications. You simply click on the Insightly widget directly in the mail in Gmail.
2. We can easily tag our shared contacts. This is a convenient feature that we use often. For example, in July this year we celebrated our one year in  business with a breakfast, and in order to create a guest list, each of us went through the shared contacts and tagged our guests. We were able to put together our guest list for invitations in no time.
3. We can document our acquisition-progress for individual “chances”. These are then linked with all relevant emails and contacts. For repetitive processes you can save the individual project steps as a template and reuse.

Insightly impressed us so much that we have already repeatedly recommended the software in counseling and training, when we see a real added value for our customers. For example, in advising a start-up from the production area, we recommended Insightly because it was looking for a cloud-based CRM that can be linked to Google Apps.

About the Author:  Andrea König from Hamburg (Germany) is working as a freelancer specializing in IT-communication. In 2013 she founded plus3trainings together with Holger Ahrens and Marcus Hampel. The team supports companies and their employees with trainings, change management and support surrounding cloud-based software like Google Apps, Podio and Insightly.

I have a client who manufactures custom furniture. Last month he spent more than $150,000 on a specialized woodcutting machine. He needed about 10 minutes to make the decision. “It was a no brainer,” he told me. “I know for a fact that I can do a half a million of business on that thing alone in just the next year. The Return on Investment obvious.”

“How about a CRM system?” I asked him. “That will only cost you less than a thousand bucks a year.”

“Yeah, still thinking about that,” he said. “I’ll get back to you.”

Welcome to my world. As someone who recommends customer relationship management systems I’m always meeting smart business owners who are always looking to make money. They’ll invest when they can calculate a return on that investment. They take risks, but their aim is to minimize those risks. And buying a CRM system is a risk. These are smart people and many can’t figure out if it’s worth it. Do you have the same issue? Obviously, you’re not alone. So let me help you. It’s just math.

You’re probably reading this on Insightly’s blog so it’s only fair to use Insightly as our example. Forget the free edition – let’s assume you’re splurging and want to get the Standard version for your ten user group, which, at a whopping $7/user/month will set you back $70, or $840 for the full year. But you should never consider ROI for just one year. Good investments take a little longer to return that money. So let’s look at a five year return – a reasonable time frame considering that you’ll likely keep your CRM system that long. Your cost for Insightly over that period would be $4,200.

When calculating ROI you never just want to get your money back. You want to earn from your investment. Otherwise, why spend the $4,200? You can stick it in the bank at 5% a year (or even 1% at current interest rates!) and it’ll make you more money over five years then if you’re trying to get your money back. You want this investment to at least bring you back $6K at a minimum. Hopefully more.

So now comes the math. If you’re looking to bring in $6K over the next five years that’s $1,200 per year, or $100 per month. Your question is this: Will this investment earn me $100 per month over the next five years? Will it? Now comes the no brainer part.

If implemented the right way, CRM systems do three things. It ensures that nothing falls through the cracks, no customer or prospect gets ignored, no task is forgotten. It ensures that no one in your company looks like a dope, that they know all that’s going on with your customers and prospects, that the right hand knows what the left is doing. And finally, it builds an intangible value in a business, creating an asset of customers, partners, prospects and others that make up your community, an asset that’s worth something to a future buyer or investment.

Now sit down and look back over the past few years. How many sales were lost because customers were ignored? How many quotes and proposals were forgotten and not pursued? How many customers are being undersold because you are not considering additional products and services that they may be interested in? How many customers are not considering more services from you because they’re not hearing from you enough? How many customers just disappeared because an issue wasn’t followed up timely or even fell through the cracks? How many customers of customers (and friends, and vendors, and partners) could have been referred to you by your customer with just a little better communication?

You know this. You probably know this off the top of your head. But sit down, think, pull out some files, go through your accounting system and make a list of all these people. Forget five years, just do this for the twelve months. And then associate a dollar value – the dollars lost or opportunities missed. Add up that dollar value. Does it add up to more than $6K? And that’s just from this past year, right? Yeah, I thought so.

Congratulations. You just validated the ROI of your CRM.

About the Author:  Gene Marks is a small business owner, technology expert, author and columnist. He writes regularly for leading US media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur. He has authored five books on business management and appears regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC and CNBC. Gene runs a ten-person CRM and technology consulting firm outside of Philadelphia. Learn more at genemarks.com